State Business Groups Urge Lawmakers To Fight Commute Rules In Clean-air Law

January 12, 1994|By David Ibata, Tribune Staff Writer.

A resolution backed by four of the state's largest business organizations and to be introduced Wednesday in the General Assembly demands that the U.S. Clean Air Act be stripped of language requiring reductions in driving by Chicago-area residents.

The House resolution calls on the Illinois congressional delegation to work with other states to repeal employee trip-reduction mandates of the federal law.

The resolution's backers are the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, the Illinois Manufacturers Association, the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.

Legislative sponsors will be state Reps. Thomas J. Dart (D-Chicago) and Ann Hughes (R-Woodstock), said David Vite, president of the retail merchants group.

Trip reduction, or "Employee Commute Options," which holds employers responsible for getting people to give up driving for mass transit, ride sharing and other ways to commute, "is a dumb idea and is too expensive," Vite said, "and the return on one's investment is not worth the work."

The four associations have flip-flopped on a previous position of grudging support for trip reduction. Before, Vite said, "we didn't have facts and figures about the California experience."

Vite referred to a 5-year-old Los Angeles-area trip-reduction program, the model for the federal clean-air mandate.

A joint statement issued by the four business groups Tuesday asserted that the Los Angeles program costs employers $136 million to $197 million per year to administer.

Employers, they said, are spending $3,000 for every car taken off the road and $232 for every worker subject to the clean-air law, while a U.S. General Accounting Office study has reported a reduction in vehicular traffic of only 1 percent to 3 percent in the Los Angeles area.

The business groups' resolution comes at an awkward time for the Edgar administration, which is seeking to comply with another Clean Air Act mandate by pushing legislation that provides for more rigorous vehicle emissions testing in the Chicago area. About $700 million in federal highway funds are at risk if that bill doesn't pass this month.

Transportation experts expressed fears that the resolution also would embolden employers to resist the state's commute options program, to start in February.

"I would say this would kill it," said Andrew Plummer, deputy director of the Chicago Area Transportation Study. "I don't know how (the state) will get any employer to participate."